VIDEO: Kansas City pastor disgusted with "cheap" congregation who wouldn't buy him a new watch

Agent 17 has submitted to Walt's True Stories competition a jaw-dropper reported yesterday in the Kansas City Star (and elsewhere).

Pictured at right are Rev. Carlton Funderburke and Rev. Sylarena Funderburke, co-pastors of the evangelical Church of the Well in Kansas City MO, which they founded some years ago.

The Funderburkes and their three children manage to live on an annual income in the vicinity of $70,000, which they receive from their congregation in a city where the median household income is $56,179. 

Rev. Carlton described his faithful followers as "poor" while delivering a stinging rebuke to them, captured on the video below, for not buying him a Movado watch for which he had asked a year ago! 

Movados sell for $395 to $3295, but surely (he told astonished worshippers) that's not too much to give to "take care of God's shepher." As he paced around the stage on Sunday, August 7th, he called his congregation "poor, broke, busted, and disgusted." Give a listen.

   

Just in case you can't open the video, or don't believe a man of the cloth could be so avaricious, here are a few more of Rev. Carlton's choice words.

"I'm not worth your McDonald's money? I'm not worth your Red Lobster money? I ain't worth your St. John Knits -- y'all can't afford it nohow. I ain't worth your Louis Vuitton? I ain't worth your Prada? I'm not worth your Gucci?"

He went on to say that he was wanted his members to "know what God is saying.... Ooh, you can buy a Movado at Sam's [Club] and you know I asked for one last year. And here it is all the way in August and I still ain't got it. Let me kick down the door and talk to my cheap sons and daughters."

The video, posted to TikTok four days ago, has racked up hundreds of thousands of views and comments. The Funderburkes' congregation plans to take up a collection this coming Sunday to enrol Rev. Carlton in a Remedial English course.

Bob Edwards' prayer to the one true god

A century ago -- before the Internet, before TV, before radio, before anyone told you what to think -- there was print. Newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets gave writers the means to express their opinions.

Bob Edwards had opinions -- plenty of them -- which he printed in The Eye Opener, published from 1904 to 1922 in wherever in Alberta Bob happened to be when the effects of the drink wore off. (To be fair, he went on the wagon and came out for temperance in the elections of 1915.)

Mr. Edwards pioneered a new style of journalism, writing irreverently about anything and everything that pleased or displeased him. His columns were chuckled over in bars, brothels and (kinda secretly) respectable homes all over western Canada.

Here is a slightly edited version of Bob Edwards' prayer to the great god that people of all faiths worship.

O ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, without thee in the world we can do nothing, but with thee we can do all things. Be with us, we pray thee, in all thy decimal parts, for thou art the only one altogether lovely, and the chief among ten thousand.

There is no condition in life where thy potent and all-powerful charms are not felt. In thy absence how gloomy is the household, and how desolate the hearthstone; but, in thy presence, how gleefully the beefsteak sings on the gridiron, how genial is the warmth that anthracite coal or tamarack wood diffuses throughout the apartment, and how exuberant the joy swelling in every bosom.

Thou art the joy of our youth and the solace of our old age. Thou canst adorn the gentleman and feed the jackass. Thou art the favourite of the philosopher, and the ideal of the lunkheads when an election is to be carried.

Almighty dollar, thy shining face bespeaks thy wondrous power. In my pocket make thy resting place; I need thee every hour.

And now, almighty dollar, in closing this invocation, we realize and acknowledge that thou art the god our our grandfathers, the twofold god of their children, and the threefold god of their grandchildren. Permit us to possess thee in abundance, is our constant and unwavering prayer.

Amen.